Women of Grace ~Weekly Devotional~ May 24-30, 1999 |
| 1. Submission is an
inner quality of gentleness that affirms the leadership
of the husband. "Be submissive to your husbands" means that a wife will willingly submit to her husband's authority and leadership in the marriage. It means making a choice to affirm her husband as leader within the limits of obedience to Christ. It includes a demeanor that honors him as leader even when she dissents. Of course, it is an attitude that goes much deeper than mere obedience, but the idea of willing obedience to a husband's authority is certainly part of this submission, as is clear from verses 5-6. There Peter illustrates being submissive to their own husbands with the example of Sarah, who obeyed Abraham, thus showing that obeying (hypakouo ) is the means by which Sarah was being submissive (hupotasso , the same word used in verse 1). Moreover, this submission is a respectful affirmation, for Peter recalls that Sarah obeyed Abraham and called him master (verse 6). Further understanding of the nature of this submission is gained from Peter's description of the beauty that accompanies it, the beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight (verse 4). The adjective gentle (praus) only occurs three other times in the New Testament, twice referring to Christ (Matthew 11:29; 21:5; also 5:5), but its related noun, translated gentleness or meekness, is more frequent (Galatians 5:23; 6:1; James 3:13; etc.). It means:
Such a gentle and quiet spirit will be beautiful before other human beings, even unbelieving husbands (verses 1-2), but even more important, it is of great worth in God's sight. Why? No doubt because such a spirit is the result of quiet and continual trust in God to supply one's needs, and God delights in being trusted (cf. 1 Peter 1:5, 7-9, 21; 2:6-7, 23; 5:7). In describing the things that accompany this submission, Peter focuses on the inward attitudes of the heart. When he says that a wife's source of beauty should be the inner self (verse 4), he is speaking of her inward nature, her true personality. It is not visible in itself, but it is made known quickly through words and actions that reveal inner attitudes. Unfading (Greek aphthartos) is an adjective that the New Testament uses consistently to speak of heavenly realities, things that are not subject to aging or decay, things that will not fade away with the passing of this present world. Peter uses this adjective without a noun following it, so the noun he intends must be supplied by the reader from the context. Various suggestions have been made (RSV-imperishable jewel; NIV-unfading beauty; NASB-imperishable quality ), but the sense is roughly the same in all of them: a gentle and quiet spirit is something that has beauty that will last for eternity, in contrast to the fleeting beauty of jewelry or clothing. |
| 2.
Submission involves obedience like Sarah's. There have been several attempts to avoid the conclusion that Christian wives today are to imitate Sarah's obedience to Abraham, which Peter gives here as an example of the holy women of the past who put their hope in God (verse 5). One prominent approach is taken by Gilbert Bilezikian, who attempts to deny the force of Sarah's example of obedience in two ways: (1) He apparently takes Peter's statement as a joke, for he says, The use of Sarah as an example of obedience shows that Peter was not devoid of a sense of humor. In Genesis, Abraham is shown as obeying Sarah as often as Sarah obeyed Abraham, and he points to Genesis 16:2, 6; 21:11-12. 5 (2) Bilezikian also denies that Sarah is a model for Christian wives to follow, for the point of Peter's reference to Sarah is that wives in the new covenant can learn from their spiritual ancestress . . . who lived in the 'dark side' of the old-covenant compromise, when she had to 'obey' her husband. . . . Sarah obeyed Abraham, but Christian wives . . . are never told to 'obey' their husbands neither here nor anywhere else in the Bible. These statements are very troubling. (1) To say that a straightforward Biblical statement is an example of humor is simply an easy way to avoid the force of a verse whose plain meaning contradicts one's position. But is this the kind of argument that reflects submission to Scripture? As for Abraham's obeying Sarah, Genesis 16:2 is a classic example of role reversal leading to disobedience to God, for in this verse Abraham gives in to Sarah's urging and has a son by Hagar. In Genesis 16:6, Abraham does not obey Sarah but is clearly the family authority who (again wrongfully) gives in to Sarah's recriminations and allows her to mistreat Hagar and Ishmael. Why does Bilezikian refer to these examples of sin as positive examples of a husband's obeying his wife? To use such a procedure is to contradict the force of these passages. In Genesis 21:11-12, God tells Abraham, Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, but this was specifically with regard to casting out Hagar and Ishmael. It was not because of any general principle that husbands should obey their wives, but because of God's specific purpose for Isaac, for the verse continues, . . . because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned (Genesis 21:12). Abraham did what Sarah asked here not because he was being an example of a husband obeying his wife but because at this specific point God told him to do what Sarah said. God here used Sarah to convey His will to Abraham, but no pattern of husbands obeying their wives is established here. (Note, for example, that a child can call his or her father to supper without any implication of authority over the father.) In fact, the exceptional intervention of God here suggests that Abraham would not ordinarily accede to such a request from his wife. (2) Although Sarah was not always a model wife, Peter does not choose to exploit that fact. However, whereas Peter uses Sarah as a positive example for Christian wives to imitate, Bilezikian uses her as a negative example showing what Christian wives are not supposed to do. Peter tells wives to act like the holy women of the past who put their hope in God and were submissive to their own husbands (verse 5), but Bilezikian says this was on the dark side of the old-covenant compromise (p. 191). Peter tells wives to act like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham (verse 6), but Bilezikian says that this verse does not tell wives to obey their husbands. Readers should note carefully the result of Bilezikian's analysis of 1 Peter 3:1-7, because at several points he ends up denying what the text does say and affirming an opposite concept that the text does not say. Peter says that wives should be submissive to their husbands, but Bilezikian says that the motivations for a Christian wife's behavior should have nothing in common with submission defined as obedience to authority (p. 190). Peter does not say that husbands should be submissive to their wives, but Bilezikian says that husbands should be submissive to their wives and undergo a traumatic role reversal whereby they bestow honor on their wives much like a servant to his master (p. 192). Peter says that Sarah obeyed Abraham, but Bilezikian emphasizes his own claim that Abraham obeyed Sarah. Peter says that wives should follow the example of Sarah who obeyed her husband, but Bilezikian says that wives are nowhere told to be obedient to their husbands. We may well wonder if this can any longer be called simply a difference in interpretation of Scripture, or if it isn't rather a refusal to submit to the authority of Scripture at all, hidden under the smoke screen of alternative interpretations -which turn out on closer inspection to have no legitimate basis in the actual data of the text. |
| 3. Submission acknowledges an
authority that is not totally mutual. Although Peter is speaking specifically to wives in this section, many people today object to any kind of submission that is required of wives and not of husbands. In order to avoid the force of any command that would tell wives to be submissive to their husbands' authority, evangelical feminists frequently talk about mutual submission within marriage. The phrase itself is slippery, because it can mean different things. On the one hand, it can mean simply that husbands and wives are to be thoughtful and considerate toward one another and put each other's interests and preferences before their own. If people use the phrase to apply to such mutual consideration and deference, then they are speaking of an idea that is fully consistent with the teachings of the New Testament and that still allows for a unique leadership role for the husband and a unique responsibility for the wife to submit to his authority or leadership. Mutual submission would then mean that the husband is to be unselfish in his exercise of leadership in the family and the wife is to be unselfish in her submission to and support of that leadership. Although we might think that this is using the word submission in a rather unusual way, we would probably agree that this is a possible sense of mutual submission. We would then say that there is mutual submission in some senses in marriage, but not in all senses, because the wife still has to submit to her husband's authority and leadership in a way that the husband does not have to-indeed, should not-submit to his wife's authority or leadership. He has a unique leadership role in the family that he should not abdicate. But the standard claim of evangelical feminists today is that mutual submission in marriage means something far different. They apply this slippery phrase to all the texts that say wives should submit to their husbands and deny that any submission to authority is in view. This is how they avoid the force of Peter's command, Wives . . . be submissive to your husbands (verse 1), if they discuss it at all. They say that mutual submission in marriage means that wives are to submit to husbands and husbands are to submit to wives in exactly the same way. According to this view, the husband has no unique authority or leadership responsibility in the marriage. Usually Ephesians 5:21, Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, is claimed to support this view. But in order to make this argument, evangelical feminists must take two steps in the interpretation of Scripture that are simply incorrect and that show their position to be contrary to Scripture. First, they fail to account for the fact that, while wives are told several times in the New Testament to submit to their husbands, the situation is never reversed: husbands are never told to submit to their wives. Why? In fact, it is very significant that the New Testament authors never explicitly tell husbands to submit to their wives. The command that a husband should submit to his wife would have been highly unusual in that male-dominated culture, and if the New Testament writers had thought Christian marriage required husbands to submit to their wives, they certainly would have had to say so very clearly in their writings-otherwise, no early Christians ever would have known that that was what they should do. It is surprising that evangelical feminists can find this requirement in the New Testament when it is nowhere explicitly stated (with the possible exception of Ephesians 5:21, to which we now turn). As for Ephesians 5:21, the misunderstanding comes when the verse is read apart from its context, which shows what Paul intends. He goes on to explain that he means that wives are to be subject to the authority of their husbands (verses 22-24), children to parents (6:1-3), and servants to masters (6:4-8). In each case Paul tells those in authority how they are to act, in love and thoughtfulness and fairness (Ephesians 5:25-33; 6:4, 9), but he does not tell them to submit to their wives, children, or servants respectively. Second, evangelical feminists take another illegitimate step in Bible interpretation when they change the meaning of the word hupotasso ( submit to, be subject to ), giving it a meaning that it nowhere requires, something like be thoughtful and considerate; act in love (toward another), without any sense of obedience to an authority. This is not a legitimate meaning for the term, which always implies a relationship of submission to an authority. It is used elsewhere in the New Testament of:
Note that none of these relationships is ever reversed; that is, husbands are never told to be subject to wives, nor government to citizens, masters to servants, disciples to demons, etc. In fact, the term is used outside the New Testament to describe the submission and obedience of soldiers in an army to those of superior rank (Josephus, Jewish War 2:566, 578; 5:309; cf. the adverb in 1 Clement 37:2; also Liddell Scott's Greek-English Lexicon, rev. Jones, p. 1897, which defines hupotasso [passive] as be obedient ). Now we must recognize that submission to different kinds of authority may take many different forms. Members' submission to church leaders is far different from soldiers' submission to a general in the army, and both are far different from the submission of children to parents or of employees to employers. Within a healthy Christian marriage, as we explain elsewhere in this book, there will be large elements of mutual consultation and seeking of wisdom, and most decisions will come by consensus between husband and wife. For a wife to be submissive to her husband will probably not often involve obeying actual commands or directives 12 (though it will sometimes include this), for a husband may rather give requests and seek advice and discussion about the course of action to be followed (cf. 2 Corinthians 8:8; Philemon 8-9). Nevertheless, a wife's attitude of submission to her husband's authority will be reflected in numerous words and actions each day that reflect deference to his leadership and acknowledgment of his final responsibility-after discussion, whenever possible-to make decisions affecting the whole family. What does Peter mean in verse 1 by the word 'likewise' (RSV), (NASB, NIV) 'in the same way'? Some have objected to Peter's teaching here, saying that he is viewing wives in the same category as servants and saying that wives should act toward their husbands as servants act toward their masters. But this is to misunderstand Peter's words. The word likewise (homoios) usually means in a similar way, but the degree of similarity intended can vary greatly (cf. Luke 10:32, 37; 16:25; 1 Corinthians 7:22; James 2:25). Here the word might mean: (a) similar to the example of Christ (2:21-25), or (b) similar to the way in which servants are to be submissive (2:18). (c) that homoios simply means also, introducing a new subject in the same general area of discussion (relationships to authority), without implying similarity of conduct (see Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich/Danker, Greek-English Lexicon, rev. Danker, p. 568, and 1 Peter 3:7; 5:5). The second option is best here. Likewise modifies be submissive, and the reader would naturally make the connection with 2:18, the last time Peter used the verb be submissive (hupotasso ): Slaves, submit yourselves . . . . similarly, wives be submissive (2:18; 3:1). (The form of expression is exactly the same in the Greek text, with the unusual use of a participle to express a command in both cases.) The point of comparison with Christ would be imitation of His patient endurance of suffering, but that is not what Peter commands in this sentence. And homoios never seems to mean merely also when a suitable referent for actual similarity is near at hand (as there is here), for then the idea of comparison can hardly be kept from the reader's mind. Nevertheless, Peter does not use the stronger term kathos, even as, in the same way as, nor does he say in every way (kata panta, Hebrews 4:15) be similar to servants in your submission. The similarity intended is apparently in motive ( for the Lord's sake, 2:13), in extent of application (to good or harsh masters [2:18] or husbands[3:1]), and in attitude (with proper respect, 2:18; 3:2), as well as in the main concept of submission to an authority (2:18; 3:1). |